Aesthetic Economy

Our Post-Truth/Pre-Future Aesthetic  Economy

Among standards of decent behavior, empathy is a commendable idea and a matter of some risk should one choose to practice it.   Narrative Four   [[  https://narrative4. com  ]]  has set achieving "fearless hope through radical empathy" as its goal.  Founded in 2012, Narrative Four is one of many efforts to use narratives based on the exchanging of stories to promote communication and astute understanding among diverse populations, to increase the use of art as a means of improving humanity.  The effort is commendable, but it belongs to the realm of social engineering and the psychology of  behavior modification.  There is the rub.  Creation of personal narratives, the use of critical listening to determine what is essential in speech acts, and use of first person retelling of another's story simply can't be divorced as a stand-alone enterprise from global entanglement .  And that fact may produce as much dread as healing.

Trying to walk in another person's shoes or to see events through another person's eyes takes its toll on mind and body.  One might ultimately opt to exercise sympathy rather than empathy, because sympathy is less life-threatening.  Skilled writers do understand that.  So too do people who are not "done in" by academic pretense.  When fiction writers claim the characters they produce "speak to them"  and make various demands, the writers are indulging in benign madness.  They are only listening to their own voices, just as we listen to our voices when we "talk to ourselves." The crucial difference is the sale  of their mutterings to others, the commerce of creativity. Among ordinary people, rich stories are free and they enhance oral traditions.

When I participated in a Narrative Four exercise at the New Orleans Museum of Art on June 23, I recognized the value of the madness empathy can induce.  The empathy we assume is derived from exchange of stories allows for the paradox of insane sanity.  The paradox is pragmatic.  It can serve us well as we negotiate and resist American fascism in 2019.  We do not have to drown in the treacherous waters of  American chaos.

We were divided into groups of eight and then randomly paired with another person in the group.  Our task was to listen to our partner's story and then repeat it in the first person.  Prior to doing so, we were required to view and comment on five works of art.  My group had to deal with works by Thornton Dial,Henry Ossawa Tanner, Max Ernst, Robert Bauschenberg, and Diedrick Brachens.  We attempted to associate the works with the themes of violence, identity, faith, immigration, and environment.  Quite by accident, my partner Candice and I chose to use Tanner's "The Good Shepherd" as the catalyst for sharing narratives based on our childhood experiences.  I associated Tanner's painting more with caring than with faith, and Candice's story was more faith-based than mine.  We took notes as we listened to one another, not wishing for main points to escape from short-term memory.  Neither of us wanted to violate the sanctity of speech, but the properties of orality were stronger than our desire to be accurate. Each of us added a bit of sonic spin in our first person retelling.  Perhaps what was at work was inadvertent interpretation.  I was truly interested, even charmed by Candice's story about her father delivering a sermon in a Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago.  I doubt that more than a nanosecond of empathy occurred.  The recognition that clarity and simplicity in telling a story has great value was the most important outcome for me.

Clarity and simplicity are hard to come by in the practice of everyday life under American fascism.  Nevertheless, what I recognized about narrative as a result of the exercise on June 23 does cast light on the political and aesthetic economy of our living. A small portion of a dark paragraph from  Paul A. Baran's The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957) is an apt description of the contemporary economy of the United States of America and its aesthetic dimensions:

Incapable of pursuing a policy of genuine full employment and of genuine economic progress, having to abstain from productive investment as well as from a systematic expansion of consumption, it [ monopoly capitalism] has to rely in the main on military spending for preservation of the prosperity  and high employment on which it depends both for profits and popular support

…..

To secure popular acceptance of the armaments program,  the existence of external danger has to be systematically hammered into the minds of people.  An incessant campaign of official and semi-official propaganda, financed by both government and big business, is designed to produce an almost complete uniformity of opinion on all important issues.  An elaborate system of economic and social pressures is developed to silence independent thought and to stifle all "undesirable" scientific, artistic, or literary expression. A spiderweb of corruption is spun over the entire political and cultural life of the imperialist country and drives principles, honesty, humanity, and courage from political life. (129-130)

Under the greatly admired leadership (toxic divinity) of a  President who lies,  tweets,  and excoriates with gusto and abandon, a significant number of American citizens worship in the synagogues, mosques,  cathedrals, and evangelical  churches of  monopoly capitalism and imperialism and ascending fascism. The incessant propaganda from the Tribe of Trump retards contemplation of what independent thought once was and should be now.  Our  new  political religion discourages sympathy and empathy as  it reifies bloody Old Testament narratives .  Fortunately, Narrative Four and other efforts to  cultivate desirable literary expression greatly encourage resistance and resilience in 2019.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            June 26, 2017